Scenes From the Homestead

This post may seem entirely nonsensical to some.  But I have a very clear and important reason for writing it!  I have been alive long enough now to notice that moments are fleeting and that time passes awfully swiftly (in other words, I AM old!).  Sometimes I honestly feel like it was just yesterday that I met my sweetheart and we began the amazing journey of family life together.  My memories of our wedding day are so distinct and powerful that I can hardly believe that almost 15 years have passed since that day!  And when I look at my firstborn son, as tall as a tree, next to my sweet little 3-year-old son, as cute as a button, I think, "Wasn't it just last week that Chase was exactly like Trey is now?"  But then, I can't remember what I ate for breakfast on my wedding day, and I can't exactly remember what Chase's voice was like when he was a tiny squirt.

Anyway, the point is that this beautiful thing called family life moves very fast and I know that as precious as each moment feels, I will forget a lot of it all too soon.  There was a day a few weeks ago when Chase took my phone and decided to take pictures of the most random things around the house.  And when I found those pictures, they made me smile.  I know they are just little "nothings."  But, all of those nothings add up to a glimpse into a brief moment of our family life.  And someday I will look back at those pictures and say, "Oh, yeah!  I remember that wall sconce!"  And I will feel the sweet joy of gratitude for this amazing time of my life when I am surrounded by these things as my children grow and we build memories together.  It might sound a little crazy.  But that doesn't matter to me because I know this post will make me smile for years to come.

Here are the silly and random pictures from our home in the spring of 2014:

This birdcage and plant decor has been with me since before I met my Prince Charming.  I got it when I lived in the apartment in downtown Salt Lake City in 1997, I think.  I love it as much now as I did then!  It sits on the countertop in our kitchen, obviously right next to the bowl of bananas that I refill every week.

Fresh pineapple!  I love it and I buy it often for fruit salads and smoothies.  I don't know why it is just sitting in the middle of the countertop in this photo.  But I'm sure it was yummy!

The end table in the living room.  We bought that lamp in our early marriage, and have since painted it brown and changed the lampshade at least once.  And the tissue box just happens to match almost perfectly with the throw pillow on the couch next to it.  Pretty cool! 

Decor from the table in the entry way.  We got the table to match our dining table from Restoration Hardware.  That set of candlesticks used to have another one in brown, but it broke a few years ago.  And I made that "FAMILY" wall art at a Relief Society meeting probably five years ago.

The window next to our front door.  We loved those shades when we first moved in and still do!  We made the valance ourselves and it matches perfectly with the wall color.  Nate painted the huge walls in the entry way, all the way up two stories!  I remember fondly those home improvement projects!

A plant that sits on the other end table that goes in our living room.  This is not the usual location for this table.  It is sitting in the dining room in this picture, which is where I move it on the days we hold our Heroes Book Club meetings, so none of the kids will knock it over.  We must have been getting ready for, or just finished, one of our fun book club meetings, on the day this picture was taken!

Decor that sits on the wall behind the piano in the living room.  Can you tell that I like red?  What you can't tell is that the bowl is not attached to the pedestal there.  It broke a long time ago and I glued it back together.  But, after it broke again, I just placed it back on top of the pedestal with no glue, and that is how it sits there today.  So, don't pick it up or you will leave the base behind!

These are the pillows and toys that sit on Trey's bed.  The Care Bear used to belong to Courtney when she was a baby.  The Pooh Bear was given to us as a gift for Chase when he was 3 months old by my old friend Paul Cooley.  Each of our children have loved on that Pooh Bear in his or her turn!  And Woody was Trey's Christmas gift in 2013.  He was obsessed with the Toy Story movies back then!  And the blue fluffy pillow is there to tie in to the rest of the decor in the room and follows the polka dot motif I have on the walls.  But, Trey calls it his "mushroom pillow."

An old clock that I bought for Avery's room when he was itty bitty and obsessed with trains!  Now it hangs on the wall in Trey's room, but of course Trey doesn't know or care that it says "Avery."  The battery has been dead for at least 2 months.  I need to change that!

The toys that sit on Coco's bed: her Jesse doll from Christmas 2013, and her "Baby" doll that she has had since Christmas 2007.  It is still her favorite toy and she rarely sleeps without it!

This is the space heater that Nathan bought for me for Christmas 2013 because I am always cold in the winter.  Boy, I do get a lot of use out of that!

Trey's binki on the floor.

This is the tray on which we place Trey's breakfast for him to eat in my bedroom in the mornings while he watches Disney Junior and waits for Mommy to take a shower.  It was originally a birthday gift for Avery when he turned 9 years old and is a play on an element from the periodic table.  Cute!  I will always remember that when Avery opened that gift, he examined it for a few minutes and then ran off to draw a picture of a model of the Av molecule, with the proper number of protons, neutrons, and electrons. :)

The wall sconce at the top of the stairs from the entryway.  It has been there since the house was built; I still think it's pretty!

This is the light fixture that hangs from the ceiling in our entryway.  It's hard to see, but there is a hole in the glass on this side toward the bottom.  That hole has been there since shortly after we moved in to this house 10 years ago.  Chase broke it by throwing a ball over the stair railing to the floor below, and we've never replaced it!  You can also barely see that there is a Nerf dart in the bottom of the glass bowl.  That is there thanks to Trey and his obsession with Nerf guns last year.  A few weeks ago, he finally convinced Daddy that he needed to use a tool to reach out to the light fixture and pull it toward him and get that Nerf dart out!

Artwork on the wall next to the window in the entryway.  Black and white prints of arches.  I bought these prints from a street vendor the summer after we moved in to this house.  They match beautifully and are still so pretty!

An empty milk carton sitting on the countertop.  We have gotten our milk from Royal Crest Dairy for almost as long as we have lived here.  We always have these cartons around because we recycle them when they are empty!

Throw pillows from the couch that are, for some reason, on the floor.  I made the red pillow on the right many years ago.  The fabric is the same as our homemade window valances above the shutters on the windows in the living room.

This is our baby monitor, showing our cute little Trey taking a nap.  According to the timer, he had been sleeping for 1 hour, 24 minutes, and 29 seconds at this point.  A pretty good nap!

This is part of our chore chart.  I made this before Trey came along, and we still use it because he is too little to have his own chore pockets.  I typed up our chores on laminated cards that describe the materials needed and steps for completing each chore.  Every day they find their chore cards in the pockets and they know what they need to do before devotional in the morning.  It's a pretty good system!

The chore chart again, showing that they have pockets for each day of the week.  They never get chores on their birthdays, however!

This is a little family of Potato Heads sitting on the table in Trey's room.  I don't even know who put these little guys together, but this is sure cute!  Nathan bought our set of Potato Heads from Costco many years ago for the kids to celebrate something that happened at work...maybe a raise or a bonus or something?  There is the rocking chair that we bought when I was pregnant with Chase in the background, and the other lamp that matches the one in the living room (although the shade is different now).  You can also barely see the noise maker that we use for white noise in Trey's room during naptime, and the little wooden bird house Trey painted at Coco's seventh birthday party last year.

And here is the corner of my bed one day when I was folding laundry (which I do twice every week--on Mondays and Fridays!).  This shows the little piles of clean underwear that I have folded for each child.  The first stack is for Trey, then Courtney, then Avery, then Chase.  Why does it make me smile to see my children's underwear folded neatly in a row like that?

Thank you, Chase, for that amusing tour of the Merrill Homestead.  Oddly enough, I completely treasure every single picture and all of the memories each provides!